Proposed Virginia Legislation Would Mandate Meningococcal Vaccine

PROPOSED VIRGINIA LEGISLATION WOULD MANDATE MENINGOCOCCAL VACCINE FOR ALL SCHOOL CHILDREN BEFORE ENTERING SIXTH GRADE.

Virginia needs to mobilize to OPPOSE delegate Patrick Hope’s (D-47th district) bill, H.B. 1533 that would require all school children to get one dose of meningococcal vaccine (MCV4) before sixth grade.

H.B. 1533 was filed December 27, 2016 and will go into effect July 1, 2018 if passed. This bill does not make sense as Virginia has an extremely low, declining annual incidence of invasive meningococcal disease with only 20 cases reported in 2014 and 2015 combined, the vaccine does not protect against serotype B and the mandate will be expensive for parents.

Call delegate Patrick Hope’s office and politely ask him to withdraw his bill.

Phone: (804) 698-1047 or (703) 486-1010

Email: DelPHope@house.virginia.gov

The Virginia legislative session starts on January 11, 2017 and only lasts 60 days so your URGENT action is needed TODAY to help STOP H.B. 1533.

Important note: Please be on the look out for another action alert coming soon from The Weston A. Price Foundation regarding S.B. 1028 that was pre-filed on 1-4-17. It would require schools in Virginia to post vaccine exemption numbers publically. http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?171+sum+SB1028

Talking Points:

1) You are very much OPPOSED to H.B. 1533 that would require one dose of meningococcal conjugate (MCV4) be administered before a child enters the sixth grade.

2) The annual incidence of invasive meningococcal disease in Virginia is extremely low and is declining. There were only 20 cases reported for the years 2014 and 2015 combined. This means that for each year there was an average of 0.1 per 100,000 persons affected.

3) The mandated (MCV4) vaccine does not protect against the meningococcal serotype B that accounted for 60 percent of cases reported in 2014 in Virginia. In 2014, only 3 out of 10 cases of invasive disease was caused by one of the four meningococcal serotypes included in (MCV4.)

4) (MVC4) meningococcal vaccine is expensive. In fact, it is one of the most expensive vaccines on the U.S. market, costing an average of $115 per shot in private pediatrician’s offices and an average of $78 per shot through the federally subsidized Vaccines for Children program. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/index.html

5) A vaccine mandate is not necessary. In the past 5 years, voluntary uptake of (MCV4) among Virginia teens is up 22.6 percent, from 54.5 percent in 2010 to 66.8 percent in 2015.

6) Your body and your children’s bodies do not belong to the state of Virginia. You want to be free to choose how you nourish and keep yourselves healthy. Mandating vaccines takes away the right to informed consent to vaccination for our children. I am pro-information and pro-civil rights.

7) It is immoral to force a person to inject a pharmaceutical product into their body, or anything for that matter, even more so when that product could injure or kill them.

8) Vaccine makers and the healthcare providers who administer them bear zero liability for vaccine injuries and deaths. Vaccine makers have no incentive to make vaccines safe.

9) Vaccines are given to healthy individuals and thus should carry zero risk to the recipient but this is not the case. In fact, the US Supreme Court recognizes vaccines to be “unavoidably unsafe” and to cause injury and death in some recipients. The US Government has paid out more that $3 billion to the victims of vaccine injury. Hundreds of thousands have reported an adverse reaction to vaccination to VAERS. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/vaers/

10) Vaccine package inserts warn of the risk of brain damage, life-threatening allergy, and death and no one knows in advance whom a vaccine will harm.

11) There are many other ways to stay healthy: a healthy diet, adequate rest, sunshine and exercise, etc. without any risk of vaccine injury.

12) If we mandate vaccines, will we also mandate other medical procedures, such as fetal ultrasound, mammograms and colonoscopy? Will we dictate medical procedures based on genetic testing? Will we have a medical police to determine whether someone can leave the house with a cough?

13) Children today receive 69 doses of vaccines for 16 different viral and bacterial illnesses which more than doubles the government childhood schedule of 34 doses of 11 different vaccines in the year 2000. Thirty-five doses and 5 more unique vaccines have been added to the schedule in the last 15 years. We do not need another mandated vaccine added to the schedule for Virginia’s children.

14) In the past 5 years, drug makers have paid the US Government 19.2 billion in criminal and civil FRAUD penalties. Skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry is well deserved.